


amoured

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Basically, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Falling In Love, Happy Ending, Idiots in Love, No Smut, One Shot, jaime is sort of a jerk, kind brienne, not THAT kind of happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 15:36:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20726588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: Brienne is more gentle than she’d like to be.





	amoured

**Author's Note:**

> written 21 September 2019 DESPITE MY SPRAINED HAND; such is my dedication

There’s a softness in Brienne that she thinks maybe should have been lost years ago — beaten out of her at the inn with the man accurately called Biter, or in the woods with Vargo Hoat and the other Bloody Mummers, or earlier maybe, with Red Connington, with her father loving her and trying to marry her off anyway, or even when her mother gave birth and died mumbling and fevered, a few days after.

That softness lingers on. She goes on what ser Jaime (never one to mince words) calls “glorified errands”, finding one Stark girl and then the other, finding Jaime himself in the bathwater at Harrenhal and holding him up from drowning, as he found her, came back for her, in the horrible bear pit.

She _ought_ to have let him drown, maybe. She ought to have betrayed him and his vile sister and seen their heads on pikes, their childrens’ heads nearby and dripping tar. _I’ve never been with anyone but Cersei_ he said, bragging, confessing.

Vile man.

But over and over she sees him and thinks — feels — something impossible.

There’s a horrible gentleness in her but nothing like that is in Jaime — is there? He’s all clanking armor and hard expression, he killed a king and shrugged it off. _It was what I chose to do._

So there’s no reason for her heart to give that painful sideways beat when he speaks to her, _no reason _for her to think he’s looking at her when she catches sight of him on the wall at Winterfell, looking out — he could be staring at anyone or no one at all. He could be taking a piss for all she knows.

_Drink _he tells her, unforgiving: and she swallows down that traitorous hope with the wine, cup after cup.

And when someone knocks at her door, she knows it isn’t him, won’t ever be him — and it isn’t the Jaime she wants, anyway.

He shows up with curt words and more wine, he’s still ready to battle — isn’t he? (Yes.)

And he stays that way

until their second night

when he wakes at moonrise and looks at her — he just _looks_, oh Jaime — armor gone —

and Brienne knows why she held on.


End file.
